‘She’s great,’ Adam says automatically.
‘Are you in love?’ Leaf takes a deep drag on his long slender cigarette.
‘No.’ Adam feels the world lift up like a physical weight. It’s a relief to admit it. ‘I love her but I’m not – not that.’
‘Have you ever been in love?’
Adam stops. He puts his head in his hands. ‘I guess if I had to think about it for that long, no.’
‘I’ve just been in love,’ Leaf says. ‘Recently escaped or fallen out of it or whatever. Or maybe it’s over, but I’m still in it. I don’t know.’ He takes a photo from his wallet.
‘Is that her?’ Adam asks.
Leaf looks at him with sunlit eyes.
Adam takes the photograph. It’s a young guy outside an Irish bar with a hand-lettered sign. His eyes look troubled. He wears a white vest, jeans, a purple velvet belt. His hair is long, courses down his back, red as autumn leaves.
‘Right,’ Adam says, embarrassed. ‘Ok. I mean, sorry—’ ‘
It’s not an emotion, love.’ Leaf examines his fingernails. ‘It’s more like violence. No one tells you that.’ He smokes.
‘Maybe only some people ever feel it.’ Adam has always known that he is not made for such things.
‘How lonely,’ Leaf says. ‘But also, how peaceful.’ He coughs and hands his cigarette to Adam. ‘I can’t. You have it.’
Adam holds the cigarette awkwardly. It makes him feel like he’s got too many fingers on his hand or maybe too few. He starts to put the cigarette out but Leaf takes it quickly.
‘Don’t waste it.’
Adam says awkwardly, ‘I’ve never liked …’
‘How unfair when I love it so much. There should be a happy medium.’
‘You should take better care of yourself.’ Adam is not sure what’s happening to him. Maybe it’s the altitude. Every moment feels lit with a brilliant intensity.
‘I wouldn’t be alive today if I didn’t smoke. The things these eyes have seen.’ He smiles. ‘Does Mrs Adam bake? Does she greet you with a kiss at the door in the evening after work? Is it checkers or gin rummy after dinner? A little blond darling on the way …’
‘Ok.’ Adam stands. ‘Thank you for the opportunity.’ It’s all some kind of rich person’s game and Adam has his own problems. He wonders how to find his way back to the central hall and the front door, the way out. He wonders how he’s going to get back to his car and whether it will start again.
A hand falls on Adam’s shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ Leaf says. ‘I am – I push and push. It’s an old habit. My family had nothing, when I was growing up. You learn to take things from people. My sister took purses from women at the mall. I learned to be hurtful.’
Adam sits down heavily. He puts his head in his hands. ‘You’re right, though,’ he says through his fingers. ‘Christie’s pregnant. I don’t know what to do. We’ve got no money. I’m not a father. I’m not ready, I’m not … I feel like I’m being killed,’ Adam says. ‘My throat cut right through. Every night I wake up from dreams I don’t remember and I can’t breathe. Something terrible is going to happen. I know it.’
Leaf touches Adam’s hand. ‘Look.’ Adam raises his head. Abutterfly is settled on the railing. It opens and closes slow wings. ‘It’s a purple emperor,’ Leaf says. ‘I had a hundred shipped over from England. For the first year after they were released, I thought they’d all died. Didn’t see a single one. One day almost a year later I was up at the top of the barn. And there’s this oak tree that leans in close to the hayloft. And the branches were covered with purple – there they were. They’d been living up there all the time. Purple emperors are arboreal butterflies. They live in treetops, not down here – usually in oak trees. I hadn’t realised, or I’d forgotten, or maybe I didn’t care. I wasn’t paying much attention to things outside myself at that time. I was in a bad place.’ He smiles. ‘They do come down to ground level sometimes now. Maybe they’ve realised that it’s home. But they needed that year to adjust. They needed time.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ Adam says, hopeless.
‘The point is,’ Leaf says, ‘this place is kind of outside time. It’s like when you’re on a boat at sea, or in an airport. You can drink at any time of day and you can hide from the ticking clock. Not forever – but maybe for a little while.’
On the green hill wild rabbits move in the sinking light. They are ghost-grey and gentle among the white crosses. The sky is a haze of gold and blue.
‘Have I seen this before?’ Adam doesn’t mean to say it but the sense of familiarity has been growing in him ever since he got here. ‘I can’t have done but—’
Leaf smiles. ‘She likes you,’ he says. ‘Nowhere.’
‘She?’
